


Lividus

by TwistedNym



Series: Halfway Lies, Halfway Truth [3]
Category: King's Cage - Victoria Aveyard, Red Queen Series - Victoria Aveyard
Genre: Atara getting appreciated too, Background Relationships, Bugs & Insects, Gen, Have my favourite girlfriends, Other, Spiders, Toxic Relationships, Viper - Freeform, We get there folks, also Mariella worming her way into Hadrien gives me life, animos, whisper
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:41:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28776969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwistedNym/pseuds/TwistedNym
Summary: 'ʜᴇ ɪꜱ ᴀ ᴍᴏɴꜱᴛᴇʀ, ʙᴜᴛ ɪ ᴛʜɪɴᴋ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀʀᴇ ꜱᴏᴍᴇᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴇʟꜱᴇ. ᴀɴᴅ ɪᴛ ꜱᴄᴀʀᴇꜱ ᴍᴇ ɴᴏᴛ ᴛᴏ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ᴡʜᴀᴛ.'Power and Strength- the motto that has shaped everything in Daliah Viper's life, extending over her blood and family. After a supposed victory, the world is shaky, the country is weary. Everyone at court is still out for blood, and everyone can betray everyone in the games and dances, alliances, and fights.A palace is a dangerous place, and eyes are watching for every side. It is a good thing that an animos has many to spare as well when they choose who to trust...
Relationships: Original Female Character(s) & Evangeline Samos, Original Female Character(s) & Jon, Original Female Character(s) & Maven Calore, Original Female Character(s) & Ptolemus Samos, Original Female Character(s) & Samson Merandus
Series: Halfway Lies, Halfway Truth [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1545163
Comments: 15
Kudos: 7





	1. Aposematism

_aposematism  
_

_-the use of a signal and especially a visual signal of conspicuous markings or bright colors by an animal to warn predators that it is toxic or distasteful_

* * *

**_T_** he world screams.

It yells and shouts in spiraling anger and triumph over the Square in front of Whitefire. The sounds reach further than the mass of bodies below me on the stone, they twirl and twist through the whole city.

Their sounds vibrate, they bleed and bruise the ground, they soar as high as a bird into the sky.

This. This is the fanfare of a victory.

The world, as always in the plays, at the finals, the great line of tragedy or victory, holds a breath and watches.

And as we are noble silver, we make sure everyone sees.

As bustling as the streets are, as cold and silent are the steps in front of me. The spectacle is yet to complete, the main attraction yet to arrive.

The court is assembling slowly, trickling in, one after another to take their designated steps in behind the podium that sits over it, cameras in the distance waiting to trail on the throne.

Everyone stands to attention, trained as the soldiers, crooked politicians and bloodthirsty opportunists that we are. We all wanted a treat, we are all starving and waiting for what comes now.

My eyes push over the crowd. The feeling of too many eyes makes me nervous. Many silver ones at that, with their voices so loud and their blood boiling.

At the edges of the vision, the uniforms of the soldiers that hold the ground stick out in black and grey.

I close my eyes and breathe the energy in. It lurks around us in pent up waves. Even if the sight behind my eyes is black, when I open them, the rest is just the same.

Black is the dominating color around me.

Naturally, Viper colors are black and green. A poisonous snake that curls around the feet of a dying man and shows its fangs. But black is also the color of mourning. No one knows that better than me, a widow. My body tenses beneath my dress. Layers over layers, the memory of a widow, the leftover and revival of mourning, the never-ending pace of lying about grief.

Black is the color of solitary pain, the inked and muted lace that draws shadows over the otherwise lush display of proud colors.

Black is the color that the court wears right now, from one moment of mourning to another. Black as our hearts and black as the smoke rising from cities, trenches. Black as the letters on gravestones.

You can discern the groups of families by the small sprinkle of their other color. Their personal touch showing wealth and regal poised stances in front of the public.

To my right, just above my sight, Samson lurks beside his own diminished members of the whisper house. The blue that flows in gashes over their sides look like frozen tears. So few, but I know that even just one of them is enough to break your mind to pieces. They are a coiled fist in icy pale faces, very silent in the background as they mourn their figurehead. There's no trace of the miserable offer and the strange brutal attempt to absorb me now. He stares into the crowd waiting, but only because the public eye and his father watch him. Too many people, and none are here because they want to see him. I blink uncomfortable and tear my eyes away.

There are three other families lined up between us, sorted by their autonomous and economic importance. The ones responsible for the war efforts and their troups, the leftover pieces of what was once Macanthos among them. Occasionally, they glare up at me when I take the spot on top of the Vipers, my father makes room without asking a question. Osanos joins in the glaring daggers, but they are far too sober in the eye of the public to act nasty. Provos and Iral don't glance back to see it happen, silently on their posts, further in front.

And then, of course, in the front row, dressed in armor that is the color of spilled silver and coal, Ptolemus and his father are glaring over the square and the mass just beside their daughter and sister. The spots of honor, just like the boxes at Queenstrial and every seat ever taken in formal events. Evangeline could as well be made of the stardust that I proclaim to be the afterlife, metal clad and radiant.

The bustling, waiting for energy pens up even more, and I flex my toes in my heels. A part of me wants to take the few steps and join, again, as always. But I have no spot with them.

_And if I tell them about the arrangements I had with Maven...that I stood aside for an assassination that almost took Ptolemus out, they will never talk to me again. If Larentia ever hears about it, she will personally have my head. There are only so few chances to return to good graces with her._

My chest burns and twists in an unwelcome sensation. If I was a dog, I would put my ears to my head flat, growl, snap. As it is, all I do is hide my face in the strings of a few loose black strands of hair. My teeth grind on each other, pain that grazes like wild fire through my jaw and down my neck in a constant.

I miss the dogs around.

My senses are overwhelmed by the masses, and when I bend backward, stand as tall as I can, the chainmail plate on my chest shifts, and the arthropods on me move.

My father, as silent and poised as the rest of the court, leans on his cane and suppresses an aching the longer the noise of the filled square drives into our ears and heads.

"Don't look, but we have someone watching," he mutters.

I want to laugh because this is an official spectacle.

I expect Samson, I expect Osanos or a sad stoneskin. I have seen them all. Maybe I hope that my Samos cousins spare me a glance. The white of the Arven's sticks out of their black-dressed bodies in diamonds and bleak tresses that remind me of broken bones. But I cannot see my half-sister either, nor do I see her father. Or my mother for that matter.

Instead, someone that isn't silver or elite at all has decided to step up on the space behind us. He is dressed in grey, ignored by the eyes around just as he ignores them. He's as grey as ash, that one, from his long hair, head to his toes. Not a very pleasant sight either.

"I was wondering if he would come out to watch," I mutter back and shift. The chains on my breastplate shift. The weight feels heavy, but at least I am not wearing a tiara or any jewelry that cannot move on its own in a hundred feet. The centipedes quiver all over grooves and chains, form chokers and wristbands over my throat and the black sleeves. Their bodies add a reddish and silvery black contrast to the stark black. They look like blood. Or like the grey dressed New Blood's eyes.

Hadrien and Loren rustle in their dark suits, belts and sashes, vests in green. They have noticed the nondescript inquisitiveness as well. A smeared bit of dirt hangs over Hadrien's crooked glasses, but he is tense and wavering. Only his father beside him holds him still.

Loren gives his best not to deflate, shoulders dropping. "Who is that?"

"Haven't you heard, brother?" Atara wears a black dress suit tightly fit over her body, with green hooks clawing all over it. Her short hair is pulled back into the knot that shows the shaved underline.

"Not sure. But you must have." Loren smiles uncomfortably, speaking between pale pressed lips and teeth just as brilliant as the steps he stands on. "Three days back and already in the bustling rumours."

She only throws a black lined stinkeye over.

"He's a guest of the king. They say he's a Seer, like an Eye, but...not quite. He has been just sniffing through the palace , walking wherever he wants." Her face twitches as she wavers a little beside me, scrunching her nose."He's like _them._ "

"By them, I assume you mean red-blooded but-"

"That's enough," I warn them, shivering. "We are on air and in front of the whole nation."

When the actual _spoils_ get walked forward the podium, toward the court waiting on the steps, I can almost feel how everyone leers toward it. my head shifts slightly. I stare at Maven with his crown, the black shadow of a person against the backdrop of guards and bodies. And then there's her.

The rumors were very true.

There is a New Blood running around at court, an invasive species.

Mare Barrow, the first one of them, member of the affirmative rebels called Scarlet Guard, their own figurehead, is put right here inside Whitefire, and today is the day she has to walk through the city and be paraded around as a token of revoked fights and won back supremacy.

I have watched them the last months, I watched her fall into the arena at Queenstrial when I was still widow only and not yet chained to Samson.

I watched her stand in the middle of a bloodbath, a failed assasination and an explosion that made me slip in the blood of a child.

Ironically, or perhaps it was to be expected, I don't feel anything staring at the way this presentation is is handled.

I know leashes and harnesses. They are necessary for handling dogs or birds sometimes.

Around the throat of a small, brown-haired girl, the collar looks less like an only functional tool but more of something that me or Evangeline would design if we threw our taste into a shredder. It is a monstrous big thing and it only serves the purpose of finalising what he wants to convey.

 _Like a dog_ is a derogative term for most people. She was dragged to a parade over parts of the street and town and now he walks her one last stride in a victory march.

So far, so good, but if the rest of the rumours is true as well, he sent my cousins on a nonsense way and then just took her and let his brother run free.

For this?

Quite humiliating, I have to agree, knowing my way around humiliation.

I let one of the centipedes run along my wrist and down my palm. He rests there soft and cool. His legs tickle me, the pincers click.

 _"Here is the leader of the Scarlet Guard, Mare Barrow."_ Another speech, another theatre play, another spurt of lies to assuage - gauge at the current ebb and flow. _"A murderer, a terrorist, a great enemy to our kingdom. And now she kneels before us, bare to her blood."_

He's good. But what else is new. He doesn't flinch when he lies, he just say whatever thinks will serve the purpose. I am a Viper, Maven has the forked tongue. Merandus are and were snakes. He is half of it and well acquainted to talk.

_"Mare Barrow is a prisoner of the crown, and she will face the crown and council's judgment. Her many crimes must be answered for."_

My father has his eyes pointed at a camera half-hidden beyond the nobles. A sound system makes the vibrations on the square even worse. At the words, he looks at me, and the wrinkles around his eyes deepen. His mouth twitches.

I choke on the laugh I have to swallow. We both think the same.

_That's news to us. And we sit in that council._

If my voice counted anything, she would have been executed.

An early death is a mercy.

But then again. We have no mercy left in our shellshocked minds and hearts. Pain and suffering is a good wine. We abuse and use.

A look around proves that right. Everyone is boiling behind their faces, their backs are tense, their shoulders are partially shaking, their hands hidden behind their backs and at their sides are fists or nails that inconspicuously dig into their sleeves.

They already were at each other's throats before. This doesn't change as much as a lick. If he thinks his theatre play does anything to appease them, he is wrong.He should know better. This is beyond the gambles I thought he would risk. 

Most of us play the same roles and leading acts for just as or even longer.

Still poised. Far from happy. They leer- they wait for the right moment. All the predators in their colors, here they are again, ready to wait for an opportunity.

And there in the spectacle, reciting his lines, stands Maven, and just as men pledge themselves to betrothals, he pledges himself to hunt down rebels until his very end. _How honorable._

And just like at the end of every theatre play, at the ending line of a scene. The crowd applauds.

None of us applauds. Every figure in their colors stands still. The banging and clapping, the shouting. It burns in my head. My family gets nervous for different reasons at the sounds. As they cheer, my father takes my hand.

His shaking fingers squeeze my hand, and my eyes flicker away, just to find both of my favorite cousins looking back. I nod- Evangeline doesn't reciprocate when she turns, but between one spike and a stand of her, she still looks over. Ptolemus is just the same. Rigid figures, the court is leaving the square. We are done. It is over. Now, the real work begins. And an armor plate made out of dark metal or centipedes won't protect or aid us very well.


	2. Infestation

_infestation_

_-to spread or swarm in or over in a troublesome manner_

_-to live in or on as a parasite_

* * *

**_I_** have endured being locked in a cell of bleak silent stone with no one and nothing to hold.

But everything I have endured fuels me with need and a tinge of curiosity.  
Perhaps that is the reason for my sudden idea now.

I am not prepared nor thinking to act out anything soon. But I do take the opportunity if it presents itself.  
It does so barely after the doors close and everyone steps in a dressage. Well practiced rows of hierachies in and outside the different packs , they blink in line and stay there.

I am in the middle somewhere. Not last, not first, because that honor goes to Ptolemus strutting by the still leashed girl and her now positioned Arven guards. I remember how it felt to be helpless in the grasp of the Arven girl and the feeling leaves a sour taste. As it is, they are the best way to formally guide someone uncategorized in abilities. She brought down a jet in Naercy and murdered quite a few people with it , no need to provoke anything.

As they use "Like a dog on a leash" as an insult, now they use a muzzle for her. Despite the muzzle , this dog still jumps, and it wants to _bite._ Her small frame leaps forward at him, and my my muscles tighten for a second, ready to bolt into action. My family shifts beside me, half of them wanting to hide. The other half waits for me to act.

The air around me feels too hot, the spac too small.

_I would be concerned if I didn't know everyone in this sparce entry hall is waiting for an oppurtunity to hurt or kill this girl._

And maybe I would be concerned if I didn't see Evangeline tug at the metal and pull the choking hold tightly. To put it mildly: the attention is divided, and everyone has their own thoughts.

I don't wait for the commotion to end.  
Time is short. Opportunities have to be used. When do I get the chance to sneak up around the closed wing like now? When will it ever be this empty or guarded again?

To use a dog analogy that is apt: You clean a kennel when it is empty, not when the dogs are having dinner inside.

The sentinels are focused on their duty of protecting the king. The nobles are all leering toward whatever my cousins and the girl are involved.

Even Samson doesn't watch me. He is staring into the open space behind them, straight forward, and his face is cold and blank. And still very determined and angry, judging by the slight push of his eyebrows and the curl of his mouth hidden in the cavern of his pressed in sharp features.

I take a few steps more back, backward, slow, slow. Some eyes brush over me, then return forward.  
I make it to the back of the line, past the last black-dressed predator in their silk gowns and harsh armor, murmuring, bolstering , listening. Their bodies are as tense as before, they all wear their heavy eyes and pressed together lips.

I weave backwards, sliding and skidding, head down, then further to the wall in one more breath. Only one pair of eyes watches me down here, overlooking the backs of the crows and something else, backing away himself.

The centipedes peak their optical units forward from their perches on the leather straps, but their sight is blurry. I see rays of light and shadows falling around his body, no form. Blinking, I hear their legs and pincers click.

They soak themselves in the scents around them instead as they creep forward and sideways over my skin and dress.

Although the shivering sensation is different, I try to compare it to the dog's.

I have smelled this one before, in the hallways, and around a military complex, on the day that we got news back from Corros. He made the animals nervous.

His reddish eyes give me one small nudge, and I press my teeth together and show them.

The New Blood makes no attempt to stop or speak to me. He isn't as old as the grey first made him seem from a distance. His hair is greying, but his face is much smoother than an old man's. It is more of the exhausted, sucked out ashy coloration of someone that has seen things. He looks like any face that I have left in Corros, horrors and pain and _too much._

This has turned into an involuntary assessment and staring contest. I don't blink as much as I just glare.

_No time for this if I want to have a moment alone._

He pushes his eyes away first as if I don't exist.

Slipping away used to be easier as nothing but my father's daughter. The weak side of the branch. It used to be easy when everyone was watching out for Larentia in brilliance or her children. My cousins have a trained and demanding presence, as they just prove now. I could fall behind and creep somewhere, between pillars and hallways, if I wanted to. Not that I did that often. Sunbathing in the stares and the knowledge you are seen with someone you admire can be quite fulfilling.

My chainmail clings to my dress and skin, it pulls at me as an envious girl pulls at hair. It presses too hard against my chest.

With another breath, I turn the corridor and walk.

Fast and steady, falling into the pace of a jogged walk. My heels bombard the floor. Occasionally, a fly, a spider, a black shadow block the lenses of a camera. A smudge on the glass just like the stain on Hadrien's glasses. My eyes turn behind me, looks I throw over my shoulder, the corner of my vision. So far, everything behind me is empty. I don't assume it will stay long that way.

Centipedes and spiders are both carnivorous. The fact that I carry them between the layers and in the chains and leather straps together is a profound and easy trick for animosi. They would eat each other if not soothed and kept still. The spiders aren't as big as the bold jumping ones and the black beloved friends. But they will do, hopefully- or they will just turn to eat each other in their hideouts around Mare Barrow's locked down enclosure.

If I infest this wing, I won't need cameras. If I just plaster the small nook and crooked edges between the stone with my creatures, I can see whoever comes and leaves.  
It isn't too different from having my eyes in the Merandus house, or the rest of this palace.

The staff and whoever gave the order clean up regularly. So I need to reinforce my grip here and there, leave them everywhere. If we have the elusive prisoners and wanderers to stay, I am best to watch them. I cannot catch them as I did on the field.

Ghostly quiet and deserted as the white blinking floors lie, my shoes ring along the way. I step on careful, but each step either makes the heels or the metal ring an alarm bell. With a few quick movements, I push together as many of the animals gathered along the way, then, at least, lean down to release the spiders and most of my many legged centipedes.

Their bended backward antennae shake, their bodies stretch out. They waver in their accentuated lines and move where I want them too. Hiding from the bright lights to accomandate to the nocturnal hours, as the nightly hunters that they are.

The air around me shifts slightly, brushing over my sweat drenched collar and arms. I swipe my empty palms over my skirt.

"You."

The Arven girl stares at me with bright, awake eyes. It isn't a whimsical look of played tragedy our mother has. She has some grit in her long pale features. I surprised her before. She wasn't prepared for my angry attack. Her hair is pushed back similar to mine, but less dark. As is everything about her, up to the tips of the rubber gloves.

"Introducing myself is probably not necessary," I answer.

"You aren't supposed to be anywhere near here," she spits the words at my feet.

I swipe my fingers over the skirt one more time. This time to rub away the seering dislike she has for me. "I was just curious on how the crown treats their guests. Are you one of the designated guards?"

A vein below her shirt, right at her chin down her throat beats heavy, pumping dark silvery blood.

Maybe I should start over introducing myself. I have attacked her, she will tell someone if we continue this badly.

And if she is a guard...another pair of eyes can never hurt.

Given that Samson can't profit from my work. I don't know how long I can hold distance.

"I wasn't in a very good mood. Adayne and I have our problems." My throat burns with every quick word. "I deeply apologise for attacking you. I forgot my manners driving her out."

I hold the now dry hand out.

She eyes it before carefully encircling my hand with hers. She is at least a head taller than me, looking down on me and the shake. The rubber squeaks over my skin in an unwelcome sticky smooth sensation.

"I also apologise for trespassing...?" My head tilts as I try to decide how long I can stretch a conversation with a jailer in front of their designated cellblock. So far, I don't see anyone, not with my eyes or the animals nearby. No red cloaked sentinels, no Arvens, no inmate of the enclosure.

"You can call me Lark." She still doesn't look too pleased.

"Then you can call me Daliah. Let us meet under more fortunate circumstances again."

Her hand squeezes mine hard, and just a moment her ability jolts over my spine and leaves me half blind.

Then she let's go.

The pathway I have used before is still empty. It almost feels as if people purposefully avoid it.

A few of my brown spiders have started to spin their silk over the corner and a part of the surveillance equipment. One of them sits straight on the hand of the New Blood not in chains.

He watches it walk lazily over his knuckles. As if it couldn't bite him to bring pain and fever. He also stands in my way.

That explains the absence of noisy folk. Everyone is rightfully careful around him. He would thwart their attempt to hurt or interrogate him anyway.

"If you want to keep your eyes," I hiss at him. "Stop staring. Or I take them."

Before I can take over the spider and let it bite him, he inhales deep and blows it off his now tilting hand. The creature scrambles and falls immediately. The brown legs fling helpless before it lands and crawl over to my shoe.

"You don't." It isn't a sarcastic answer. Just as matter of fact as someone that sees the future can be.

* * *

Four figures dressed in dark colors simmer in the small stripes of light below the window where I left my family. Only two of them are Vipers. The other two and their lingering irritate me as much as the New Blood blocking the path.

Red curls dancing and form-fitted dressed as always, I recognize the younger one immediately.

Elane speaks softly one more sentence before stopping.

The older one, redhaired and stunningly beautiful as well, is easily identified as her sister. Not only by the resemblance but the fact I have had the pleasure of meeting this Haven in a few training grounds myself when we were both her sister's age. To say I hate this _person_ is an overstatement. To say I like her is a lie too though.

Mariella Haven is dressed into loose pants and a sturdy jacket cascading over her side in a pattern, hair pulled back in a braid made of flames. She smiles at Hadrien before I step into her field of vision. Her smile fades slowly but doesn't vanish completely.

I try to act polite, pulling my shoulders back. "What an unexpected pleasure. It has been quite the while, Havens."

"True, we rarely run into each other, even though we both have our posts in the palace," Mariella states. "I should come to visit the Viper mansion more often, for both refreshing our friendship and for my fiance. Why don't you even write, Hadrien?"

"I'm not your fiance anymore," is his only answer, folding into place next to me with his face closed and his eyes wandering up and down her body. Blunt force, and in his matter of fact voiceline it makes Atara smirk and me snort in a small disbelief. Our redhaired compatriots are unfazed.

"And you would just tell me I need more exercise," he adds with a mutter.

"You do." The flame-kissed braid flickers over her shoulder when she throws her head back. "You are a _lazy_ man, and if you grow fat, you lose your best quality."

I shake my head slightly. It feels like I have walked into bickering of some sorts. I have no time for this.

"I train with our newly appointed successor now," Hadrien mumbles. "And I was in the road. I wrote you every week from home. I just-"

I have enough family problems to deal with on top of my current split between wanting to check every inch of Whitefire and possibly emerging with truth for people I respect. So I cut him off.

"I'm sure you got some things to tell each other," I propose and wave once. "Hadrien, you are free to take a break and walk a bit with _lovely_ Mariella and her sister. Atara, with me."

Atara doesn't complain.

She falls in beside me and is ready to bolt, just as Mariella decides to swallow and devour Hadrien.

"Yes, please, walk with me," she only answers, putting her hand on his arm. If I didn't know better, I could think she has to force him. His fingers climbing up to hold hers on his body say something else.

I look back over to see them disappear beyond the corner.

They evade me.

Courtship has been one whisper bruising my wrists and almost breaking my thumb.

And before that, I got a dusty salute and a stiff arm offered by Roman Macanthos. My stoneskin husband never looked too happy when he had to dance with me or accompany me. He usually hid with men that were equally involved in war, far away.

He preferred to be far away from court. Until the day he died and made me a widow.

I'm not the only one that has been lost in courtship, or betrothals or loss. The bowl almost took me out, but it killed Elane's brother. Not that she or her sister show much grief, the same polite amount of it as everyone else, probably. As I know, grief doesn't manifest only in tears.

"Where were you?" Atara purses her lips, voice sharp. I turn my attention to her. "Do you know what your husband did?"

"What my husband-" I crease my brow. "Please be specific, my darling , because there are a lot of things Samson has done. That I _know_ of."

"You are not funny." She pushes her hands into her pockets. "Never were, Daliah. I am talking about him openly stepping up to Maven Calore and the whole court offering to interrogate the girl."

My sweat turns to ice on my skin that stick in spikes to my whole body. Icicles of being well acquainted of how his form of interrogation can work. My pity is minimal for the girl at best, but this one is conflicting.

"Do they interrogate her?"

"He was denied." She says that as if she can't believe it. And that's the old part of Atara I know so well behind her new hairdo and style. The girl that loved to tell her best friend rumours in the summer heat. "I thought he got to you after you left."

"I felt a little sick."

"You are."

And I shake my chained body in a silent laugh because she is not wrong.


	3. Embroil

_embroil_

_\- to throw into disorder or confusion_

_\- to involve in conflict or difficulties_

* * *

**_W_** hen Maven and Elara took the prime seats, not even months ago, the coloration in the palace took a slight shift. Elara made sure everyone could see, although they were mourning, that she was always going to be present. It showed in the blue saturation around Whitefire. Between the black bruises that the mourning called for. Although Cesar's Square and the headline always spoke about Maven, she was always there. She always sat next to him in the council room in her own chair when she attended. She always stood behind him in broadcasts and speeches, and she always was one step around a corner. She sent shivers down my spine whenever she even looked at me. She made me scratch myself bloody by one simple collapse in my brain at a cold dinner night.

Now that the preparations for the big parade have finished. Now that the rooms in the enclosure of our special guest have been set up again. Things change again over the next few days.  
It is a gradient shift. It starts with the removal of all the Merandus colors.  
I watch from my spiderling eyes as they ship off whatever monstrosities the queen's quarters hold. A squadron drags away blue and white-colored flags. Bags get pushed away. Sheets get dragged over furniture and doors get locked and sealed up.  
As much as Maven burned me in silent anger about the open demonstration and mocking of his dead mother, he makes sure that no one can enter her private space now. As if he wants to seal away her whole existence.

It also shows in the shift, the next time I sit down in the council room.

My father and Provos snicker and whisper to my right, familiar. My chair has been moved, the squabbling shift has rotated around the table. The Vipers sit beside the Samos now.

Which means that I sit right beside Ptolemus. My shoulder scrubs over his arm when I sit down, and just for a second, I could almost reach out, almost.

But we are not alone. 

I mutter over his side, lips moving as little as possible. My hand under the table reaches out once, fingers slight on his. My skin is sweaty in comparison to his. "We need to talk."

The only answer I get is the tiniest response. A squeeze on my fingers.

This shift is not the most prominent change. The seat meant for the king has changed.

I look at the stainless heavy block of a chair. It is blackened, formless, not illustrious grand and decorated like any of the other chairs or the etched in map of the country in the table. It is a throning, heavy clump that fits the rest of the decorless effort of Maven wherever he goes now.

The coloration is familiar,the bloodlines grooves that are fused with something that is as dangerous as it is caging. My hands remember digging at similar stone in a white tiled solitary confinement. Lark shocked me with the same power that separates our ability from our being.

The chair is made of silent stone, cold marble like and infused with blood from the silencers. Everyone knows it. The eyes around the round council seating gauge and stare at it, black and narrow, bright blue, green , pale and angry. 

Erasure of whisper influence, it is written all over the palace. Volo and our side of the table takes it in with interest but stays quiet. I am pretty sure that only eliminates one more factor, and it isn't as if he wasn't in a prime position already.

The faces turn pale and grit even more when the whole table formally greets the person for the silent stone throne, black and crimson, crown situated over his head.

He has left the mind readers behind.

But the energy on the table dramatically shifts and breaks into a silent storm , a cyclon , a hurricane of angry stances at the side of the ashy seer grabbing a seat at the edge of the table.

We all stare at him with grinding jaws.

"What is the meaning of this?"

"Jon won't bother you," Maven answers, dismissing in a wave of dark eyebrows and a pale thin hand.

"I won't," the other figures agrees after a second of looking at every person in the room.

The room is cooking. When the Queenstrial incident incited a small outrage in private, this insult is an open gash.

The ashy grey figure takes the empty chair and drags it over the ground. The wood screeches. A few of us put their hand on their head, the more collected, stoic ranks above watch assertaining.

Ptolemus body next to me is tightening in muscles like a loaded gun, and if someone pulls a trigger, both of us are ready to jump.

He drags it away with a last screech, into a corner, and falls into it, crossing his legs. Comfy like he just waits for tea. Something in his body language betrays that, a dissonance, and I wonder for a moment if he hates all of us just as much as we hate him.

The room fights for thirty minutes.

Demands are made.

Insults are hurled over the map of Norta, slung around, barely wrapped in sweet words.

At the end every gets a small bite of something.

But even if all agree on the topic of Mare Barrow not being executed, the procedure of what they want to do to her isn't agreed on.

"Lady Viper is married to a Merandus. She can tell us all about the interrogation process in his stead."

I can barely stay cool, sweat collects on my exposed skin in the heat of words whirled around.

They steal the oxygen in the room.

Samson holds himself covered after the humiliation of being denied.

Hector has sicced the dogs on him before. The only times he dares to rummage around closer is in the palace, and even so he walks now with something fractured in his proud, taunting coldness. It shows in the way he doesn't dare to come too close to Maven again when everyone is looking, lurking like my spiders.

He is not in the council. He is not allowed in my home. His radius has greatly dimished for now. But I know this is far from over.

Samson doesn't know when to stop, and he never lets go, not truly, and his mind sometimes rubs against mine, from across a hallway, in some greeting, just as black flowers get delivered to my families' rooms in the palace. Thin thorn blades of flowers in rotating burgundy colors reminders of unwanted attention. The trash can in the study soon holds them every single day of the next week.

He leaves me little distant reminders he will come for me soon. Isolate me again and devour me. His cure for my sickness is death, pain and blood. I nervously fear for any open and official occasion that will have to make me stand by his side as his spouse.

In the past, Maven took care to keep him away or gave me small hints as presents. Now, I don't know if that will do.

Not when I am caught alone again with him. Without Evangeline to save me.

"There are different ways to make someone talk. I am not a mind reader nor can I speak for them." I grit my teeth. I can agree that information of any kind is valuable. But I will rather eat my own tongue than speak for the butcher.

"No whisper is part of this council," Ptolemus says , shoulders pushed out, body straight like a spear.

"We denied that possiblity," Maven pushes out now, and he looks pallid. If it is anger, who knows. Annyoance, more clearly. Chewing on the same matter again and again and having to be polite.

"A form of extraction must be prioritizied."

"This council meeting is adjourned," he ends the discussion.

Most eyes wander over to Volo.

"Postponed for later," he agrees, eyes only a slight moment smaller, a metal stud in a world made of flesh.

I wait until the room clears out. Only the New Blood and Maven are left in the end. I don't count the sentinels and guards. I wouldn't get them off my back in any way.

"A word." I rally myself to sound confident and polite. "Alone."

"He already knows what you are going to say," Maven informs me, hand still resting on one armside of the stone block.

The idea of that is not new but still uncomfortable. Even if Jon in his chair doesn't seem to pay us any mind. He stares down as if he is lost in a thought. I swallow hard and fold my hands at my sides, dark jacket crinkling in soft sounds with the movement.

"I would be proud of you if I wasn't in a conflicted situation," I tell him. "Being invaded by a mind reader like Samson can break someone that is too weak. But if you keep kicking the nobles, what do you think will happen? The council-"

"I don't have to justify my reasoning," he cuts me off. "And I know what will happen."

For a pure chance of a second I catch red eyes watching both of us.

"Don't trust him too much," I tell him. "He is just as bad as a mind reader."

"Your worry is flattering." Maven doesn't look at my face when he says that, as if he can't stand that I am still here, and that I still talk. "I don't need your advice, Lady Viper. I'm not stupid."

"I know." I barely stop myself from sounding as frustrated as my inside feels, voice keeping low. "It is your most redeeming quality. If you were stupid, you would have died the moment you were left alone. Choked on a fish bone, or mysterously murdered, who knows. Heads sometimes get dislodged from a body when no one can see, especially if it is a royal one."

The snide bite in my voice makes his lips twitch for a second. I don't know if it is a grimace or a smile.

"A good idea though," I spit out. "The silent stone. I wish I had had that months ago."

He has no answer for that, only a low nod.

I don't dare to try and visit his bedroom. Even though I can feel he still feeds the spider in its glass, I have my eyes further down the corridors when I have time for it.

I make sure to know what my Arven sister does, and who is visiting Mare Barrow's fold.

The answer is boring and makes sense in the current climate.

No one does.

Just as in a regular confinement, there are the guards, the Arven's that are allowed in and out. Meals, small second of cleaning shifts. Her cellblock is more luxurious than any regular holding cell, though. My many legged friends get blasted, trampled and swept away fast.

It doesn't mean that I give up releasing and regrouping them.

No one cleaned up my cell when I was locked in chains on a wall. No one cleaned and fed any political hostage or criminal well.

The thought is strange, it only leads me back to Ara Iral in her cell prophesizing me my end. The Irals don't show if they know she was stocked in Corros, but since one of them was stationed as a Captain to oversee it, they must have, and they must know now about her fate.

I don't, for that matter. As secretive as the base was when it was still rebuild, torn down in ruins and explosive attacks, it is even more so.

Another matter to pry in, right after surveillance of the New Bloods in the palace.

I make a mental note to check the staff and whoever prepares the food. Harris' sister, the maid, threw me on the trail of too much make up and fake silvers the first time, I haven't forgotten that the servants may very well be spies for a faction or act in self sufficient beliefs.

Even with the New Bloods being an invasive species, they are the evolution of a powerless red, and Hadrien makes sure to remind me of that whenever I grip him between meetings or find him hiding in behind his books. He hasn't stopped working on whatever data his tactless curiousity has given him from control centres and my notes. His biggest regret about the fall of Corros is not the political dilemma or the loss of lives, it is that he cannot retrieve much data from requests. I find him awake in his favourite spot between books and dogs, and sometimes the lights already die behind the shutters, but he could as well be a statue. The matter of whatever he and Mariella Haven are or were is none of my business, as long as I can see that he is prioritizing something else.

My efforts reap no reward so far. But I count on it to pay off.

Besides the flowers Samson has started bring back like a cat drags a dead mouse to a doorstep, my other present is much more valuable. It is also strange and it is a double edged sword.

My comment in the council room has left an impression.

A box gets delivered to my home late at night. I half expect a threat or anohter list to spike my blood to a frenzy.

It is a strangely constructed piece of metal, a wreath of a rough silver snake. I turn it in my head. For the size it is, the jewelry is heavy. It weighs as much as a stone. My hand clutches it tightly, feeling over the inside and finding smooth stone. Smooth stone that blinks out my connection to the world around.

The dogs look at me sleepy from their spacious pillows and blankets left everywhere.

I clutch it tightly. I wonder if it will block my mental link to animals.

And keep whispers out just the same.

If I put in in my hair, it will break in a wave over my temple. Not a crown. Not even a tiara. A wreath of sorts. I wore a similar construction when I still had a veil to cover my face.

Attached is a single, unsigned piece of paper. The ink has dried in fine sunken lines.

 _Your best quality_ , the note says. _Is that you know your place. No Queen, but still something above. Have a treat, Lady Viper._


	4. Pack

_pack_

_a large amount or number_

_a group of domesticated animals trained to hunt or run together_

_a group of often predatory animals of the same kind_

* * *

**_S_** tabbing pain pierces through my lower body the next morning when I jump out of the shower. It puts a wrench in any real plan to exercise or move much, the muddy unpleasant sensation of my aching skin, and the period cramps return. I am unsure if I want to hide away or run into a confrontation head first to hurt someone else.

The backyard is littered with avian life forms in the morning.  
Blue-grey fat doves and other smaller songbirds carefully hang around the edges, while big black bodies swirl around and occupy every corner and seat to throne over the side of the wall. The flock is loud, the murder of crows croak and call, fluffed up in the cold air.

In the flurry of feather, Atara and Loren take turns on some sort of exercise, slowly letting them circle through the sky. Sometimes one of the crows breaks formation and drifts away from the rest of the murder, attacking one of the smaller birds.

The dogs in the kennel bark at the disturbance. The three dogs that sleep in my bed or traverse in the house watch the spectacle from the window. They are only mildly curious while they get scratched and petted by my father and my hand. 

"I want her in the palace," I tell him, and the crows discordant noises rear up into the sky even through the closed window. "Atara. She has good eyes. And she is always picking up any rumour."

His cane rests at the back of the chair, the pin gleams weakly in the light above his chest like a visible second heartbeat. He pats down the scar riddled fur of the biggest dog with both hands absent-minded. "People have been transferred back and forth to security in Whitefire. She wouldn't be the only one. Some get even promoted. Iral and Haven got three new posts. To make sure we don't bite."

"Are you surprised after the last council sessions?" I grimace when I move in my own chair, the big one, behind the table, carved in wood and prowess. The bach rest of it feels too hard, and moving too much only makes me feel dirty, even if I just stepped out a shower. "Have you seen how insulted everyone was?"

"That takes focus off us at least, let them stir in anger, they take themselves out of the equation. Some of them are worse off than we are, their forces are thin over the whole country to just get a hold of whatever is stirring, pushing down possible revolts," he shrugs it off, but his weathered face pushes together, eyes adjusting in the wrinkles to look at me very careful. "You're pale. Did you eat?"

I crack my neck back and avoid to look him in the eye. "Did you?" 

He sighs, and Battle Scar creeps up to his lap, a too big upper half of a dog on a frail man's lap. "I don't feel like eating, the doctors said my tumours are spreading again. I can feel it today."

The thought of losing him breaks a bone in my ribcage and splinters through my system. My hand on Runt's head stops and she huffs in protest, ears flicking at my sudden change. My body turns stiff for a moment.

He only shakes it off with a motion of his head. The grey is so visible I wonder again: When did my father become so old? When did he become so sick? And why have I never noticed?

"It isn't a reason to worry," he reassures me. "I have it under control. You made sure I took action the last month soon enough to stop it from getting too bad."

"I'll send Hector out," I decide. "Between the two of us playing invalid. We are no good."

"Better not let anyone see it," he agrees. "I'll take care the girl gets put in place. Do you need my help with anything else?"

"No. But make sure you stay away from Samson." I shudder and drag my shoulders up. The feeling of disgust runs through the syrupy running pain in my muscles and nerves. "He hides now, but he is never too far."

"My business partner nowadays," he ends the discussion without promising me anything. "Is someone less bruised and battered in their ego. Don't worry."

But I do worry. I worry about him, and I worry about why nothing in the palace has happened yet. I worry that the unwilling timeout will make me look weak. I worry about the implications of a period, because I am a married woman, to someone that I despise, someone that makes me flinch, someone that is horrifying and despicable to the core. The memory of the ticking clock, the way everyone used to wonder if I ever would have children, reminding me about it. And the responsibility behind it. It makes me angry and scared beyond any rational point.

I pick up the wreath again, just to train myself to wear it if I have to be anywhere close a mind reader. The sudden shock of not feeling the animals around me, the cut leash, the lost connection creeps up my already tense body. Drenched in sweat and shivers, I make it exactly three long breaths, concentrating on the way the world feels now that I am alone again in it, without somewhere to flee, without any other eye than my own.

I feel the wood beneath my bare feet, the air around my face. The quiet hush.

The house has changed around me, it breathes differently. 

The rooms opened with Adayne's removal get conquered and divided between us. The salon used to be my least favorite spot, but who knows who will come to socialize now that the stained existence of her is no longer keeping them away.

Much to my personal chagrin, this space is mine to command over now, as the oldest and the most prominent female figure in this household. At least it is a nice project to occupy my hands in the hours when I test to wear the wreath and can't sleep. It stops me from scratching me bloody, and it helps not going crazy in the clogging, dirty pain of blood leaving my body in cramps.

I remove the horrible screaming pillows and furniture and just replace them with whatever I let Atara pick around and collect in the mansion.

Even in her shaved and racoon-eyed momentary phase, she is color-coordinated, and she always liked dresses, appearances and fabrics more than me. The only thing that is my own are the different glass exhibits flowing to both sides. They are filled with water, big over the wall, flowing over with plants and live.

The fish inside flutter in dotted, floating patterns. They look much more like something I would want to see in a room like this. Silky long tails, brightly colored, spiked, they are still silent in their grace. Gone is the overdriven madness of colors and music. The water snapping in circles and falling like a waterfall is soothing in comparison. I decide I like it better than my old bedroom, and I don't want to occupy the study when the older men do all the work for me right now. So I spread my papers, letters, and a big cup of searing hot tea on the table in the salon and listen to the waterfall and trickling of fish. Just for a day, I decide, just for one day. While I try to figure some more basic needs out this family and this whole business has. 

I am feeding these animals and people. I have a responsibilty to the whole existence of this ruling class and system. That is what this is. 

And some of the pieces in my life, like the red boy, are missing, gripped and wrapped away, far off, left for me to ponder if I did the right thing. Standing to my decision like the woman I love most in this world told me to do. 

The broad stroke of the windows is open to the yard. I can hear shouting beneath the morning barks in the kennel, the irritation caused by the swarm of birds sinks only slowly.

The shouts are human this time, from voices I know, and they shout names I know too.

I drop the container with the grains of fish feed on the table to peek outside, enjoying the cold wave of wind on my heated skin.

The spectacle of Atara showing off her plumage continues. Now though, Loren has retreated to a spot to the side, accompanied by narrow Bryce, and both of them are clearly engaged in some sort of wager over figures that move on the ground.

One is small and wears the same black cut attire as before, muscles strained, skin flushed, pulling up and down from the ground, arms pushing her stretched back and planklike body up and down.

Asher does pushups in the same flowing movement, but he looks comically large next to her.

Their bodies move in a fast cadence, snapping. Holding tension.

"50," Loren shouts and claps his hands together. The sound sends a dove straggling behind the others on the stones upwards in a grey flurry. "Come on Tara, keep up, don't make me lose money to the banshee!"

His sister only grits her teeth at him and stares over to her much bigger opponent. He sweats just as profusely, skin discolored.

Bryce pushes his hands in his pockets and does the same. "You better not lose just because you like her, Asher."

I watch from my spot at the window. The wind cools me off, and I wish I could join in the competition. My cramping stomach and sensitive skin disagree, I hate it, fingers grabbing the windowsill hard. If I could neuter and spay myself and just stop having any trouble with this, I would.

The contest continues for a while before Atara starts to shake. Her arms give in and she lies in the dirt face first.   
Loren shakes Bryce' hand and lets something I presume money slip into it. Still a gambler. Still losing the wager. Old Loren would have snidely snapped something at his sister for giving up. This one just leans down next to her. He even rolls her around, and she lets him, dirty, narrow-eyed, breathing hard.

Asher kneels next to her for a moment before he stands up, and he smiles.

I didn't know my guard could smile, but I shouldn't be surprised. They help each other up, the spectacle is over.

Just as some of their eyes turn to my cozy spot at the window, I push up and smash the window closed.  
Then I turn back to feeding the fish. My fist shakes the black pellets into the water with irritated swipes. The pillows of my dogs are deserted. When I listen into the hallway, I can hear them.

They bark and growl, their paws click and their voices heave themselves in elevated sounds through the dark wooden corridor.

I lurch past the doorway in alarm, the baton in my hand. Just in case Samson has decided to come and visit us, I wear the wreath of madness and have a weapon to beat him to a pulp.

But the longer I listen, the less concerned I get. It doesn't sound like a defense of their territory. More like their ground-shaking tumbles in the yard when they play. Even without the direct connection to their minds, I can hear the difference.

In the foyer, the pack has started to celebrate and greet two familiar figures with jumps and licks, tugging and breaking in maneuvers around them in enthusiasm.

Runt rubs her whole head into Evangeline's hands, ears crumpling, face squished together in her fingers, licking them a few times. She also leaves fur all over the fabric of her jacket and the shins of her dark pants, but at least it has a similar color the rest of her silver and grey jewelry and bands slung over the fabric in some spiked hypnotic pattern.

The brothers just tug and jump at Ptolemus side a few times before One Ear leans up against his side.

I whistle weakly, a high pitched shake of my cracked lips.

They snap back and retreat, with wagging tails, slowly calming down in puffs and sighs.

"Hello family," I say, letting my hand sink off the baton. "To what do I owe the surprise visit?"

My dogs' have dagger teeth. Evangeline's open expression is the same, sharp white teeth in a canvas of smooth pulled lips. "You can't keep saying to Tolly and me that you have important things to talk about and then run away."

"Oh. Well." I try not to let my face slip, to not tell them that I am very willing to talk, but that I am scared. Fear is a sign that is not perfectly well perceived. They will know something is wrong. In the best case, they worry. In the worst, they see through my following attempts of deception.

"Oh?" She repeats, somewhat halted in a state of mock or worry, all pushed together and chin up. I am not sure what the sharp retort means in my hazy state. "That's all?"

"Apologies." When I bow the weight of the wreath makes my neck strain even more than the needles in my hair, and it hurts. It hurts with the explosion outside and the formed mess of being all alone inside. "I am overworked."

Her brother looks at my face and back the baton. "Did you expect someone else? The whisper?"

I smile as sharp as the metal affixed to his uniform. "I wasn't sure who I expect anymore. But I'm always happy to see you two." 


	5. Acquit

_acquit_

_\- to discharge completely_

_archaic **:** to pay off (something, such as a claim or debt)_

_obsolete **:** repay, requite_

* * *

**_I_** lead the way in a tempo Atara calls sluggish. Their eyes take in the changes in the house now that the disruptive factor of Adayne is removed. In the milisecond left, everything has stayed the same in the salon.

"No one told me it would be so many reports and small-town politics to rule a house," I start, trying to joke. It feels pale. They don't take the bait either. The wreath cackles at me in decrepit patterns of betrayal.

"I have been working through bills, and all the missing and conflicting information on Corros," I swish my hands over the mass of papers. The highest pile on the table wobbles once before I push it together. the other two shake and quiver harder. Images from my personal confidential notes, small pieces of names and villages that Hadrien has not taken yet. The notes about the brood that Maven send me before Harbor Bay, dusty and almost useless now in the changed again climate. "There's a lot to unpack. I have only been there once, but as someone employed to fill it, I was interested in seeing who made it out. Who was killed. Who was injured."

Nothing of value has come out of it. I sigh. The papers flutter down the table right at Ptolemus foot at that small poof of air blown over their forms. As he shifts I think he will just step on them. Despite my offer, they don't sit.  
Evangeline shows one sharp corner of her teeth in her pretty face, and I wonder if she scans my weakness.

The water in the background suddenly doesn't feel so calming anymore. It is the orchestra of me frowning to find the right words and not drown.

I channel as much from their mother through my spine as my cramping kicked body can stomach. I stand still too hunched, but at least I put my chin up. At least to keep a part of my dignity.

"Maybe you can help me out. You were there."

I stretch my hand forward, meeting his halfway.

He stares at the image of my body in grains of grey, flying over a ceiling to get the scars I carry before he hands it over to me.

"He's dead," is his only answer.

It crane my neck at that information, digging into the fabric of the paper with broken stuttering nails."The jumping one? You killed him?"

"And others." His mouth coils a little by the statement.

Siblings, fathers, children, all die here.

Something warm fills my stomach a second and gurgles up my throat gruesome. I don't know if that's a feeling of sickness or happiness. Maybe I am going to throw up.

"See," I tell him and smile. My hand brushes his arm before I retreat back to the safety of the chair and all the animals pushing along the edges of the room. "This is why you are one of my favorite people. One less person on my personal death list. You're a darling."

One corner of his mouth lifts slightly, a moment, almost satisfied by my affection and praise.

The air relaxes for that short moment.

The dogs move on their pillows, one yawns again. They rest below the tanks. The air is sticky and cold at the same time, the temperature of horrified sweat on the skin.

It is a subtraction on how much to tell- this is dangerous. The weak childish part of me wants to unleash all.

It would be a foolish endeavor. Would it be worth the risk? It is what I fear and what I want to do most.

My teeth grind on each other for a moment, the familiar gesture of discomfort.

The tense silence in the room is laced by the way they both wait.

"This is confidential, just between us," I start. "I have been pressured in the past, since I came back. That's not very surprising. Both Maven's mother and my husband had a hand in it. I had...I was having trouble connecting some themes. They reared me back in. Especially my latest husband. The sudden marriage after Queenstrial made him very quickly very violent."

I leave out any relation to Maven. The problem is that even though both don't know how deep the blackmail and comradery between us two backstabbers runs, they know enough. My mental has slipped before.

I see it in their faces. A twitching blink of a moment between them, between their eyes making contact.

They both know it, and they probably have told each other from the instances of Maven and me snuggling up in private conversations after council meetings, burned hands, insults, and threats. I screamed the wrong things at Ptolemus when I broke down in Harbor Bay, and I gave Evangeline too much to read in.

"You're lying," Evangeline states. "Very poorly. That's not what you want to say."

I feel the spine in my back crack as I try to keep myself up.

"I was blackmailed before the sun shooting," I concede and lower my head again. The old showing of the belly, the old undertow of knowing your place or pretending to do so. "And Maven Calore offered me to get rid of Ellyn Macanthos in exchange for keeping good old Ara busy. I knew about Mare Barrow and her... curious heritage. But I swear-"

My breath collapses in my lungs when I flinch back at the movements of their bodies.

They aren't attacking me. They lean forward and they stand in attention like my dogs, with something akin to cautious anger building behind their smooth faces stretching in tense understanding. Suspicions racing behind pale faces and hard lines of lips.

The dogs press their heads on the ground behind me.

"You-"

I stretch my hands out as if that could save me from any attack. The gesture is not even a command like the ones I push to the dogs. It is a gesture of surrendering.

If Evangeline decides to throw herself in an ambush at me, I am as good as dead. I have trained and watched her enough to know. Ptolemus eyes are narrow black pools.

"I didn't know they would try to kill Ptolemus, I swear on my blood and the colors and whatever you want me to." It weighs on my chest and breaks another rib, the vomit in my throat rises nervously, acidic taste of bile already in my mouth. _I'm vulnerable,_ even without the wreath on my head. "I'm telling you this so you know that things have changed. The more I got back to you, the more I changed some of my- I mean it when I say you are my favorite people. _You are my family._ I haven't done anything that would hurt you."

"I told you I'd have your head," my cousin says. The chair beside me flicks and crumbles away, just an effect. She could break my body in a second. The metal strewn in parts over the room and on their clothes could murder me as effective as a bullet.

"The whole bit about the whisper," Ptolemus snarls, and I can feel the intensity of the insinuation. With a swallowing breath I want to imagine there is something beside the anger- worry in cracks between eyebrows and lips.

I don't answer and he pushes along the edge of the ruined chair. The water in the tank bubbles and a bright blue and green specimen of the fish hastily rushes off to the other side. "Your whole speech at the landing platform about failing."

I don't cry, but my face burns in sucked out shame and exhaution. The dogs growl low, waiting for any command.

"It's real. It is all real. We are not friends. I couldn't tell you about Maven and our dealings. But everything else is real." I shake the shame away, swiping over my face. "Samson wouldn't collaberate. He wants to take things. Evie, you saw him. You both know this is not a lie."

I still want to say I had no choice, but that wouldn't be true. What a web we weave in denial.

Instead of speaking, I just feel the hot streaking way my muscles lock up in shakes. Both their frames are blurry in the reflections of the tanks and my rapid blinking. Towers of black and silver in my sight.

The growls beside me grow more intense.

"We both warned you," Ptolemus says, and the words vibrate through me.

"Oh I know, but it was too late already," I answer and turn away. "Now you know."

Evangeline makes a low sound at that.

Larentia's words soar through my blood, it is all that I have left. Family is all that I have.

"I have plans, there's surveillance I am setting up, and I will share them with you. Just in case...in case I get removed. It could happen. Maven likes me enough to send me on missions and give me gifts. He will still tell someone to stab me or lock me up if I am becoming a problem. We all know he has enough of that already." One long breath through the muddy feeling on my skin. "Can I count on you, family?"

"Can we count on you?" Evangeline asks. Hard to read what is just occuring behind her brow.

"Can we, Dali?"

That stings more than it should.

"A Viper for a Samos," I tell them. I'm the oldest in this room. I need to act like it. Even if we all know they don't need my protection. "I'll take a bullet for you if I have to. Now. Back to business?"

My other Samos cousin retreats slowly, and the dogs stop growling.

"I have mutiple eyes set on...specific corridors in the palace. They get cleaned more and more regularly, but still."

* * *

I half expect Samson in my old bedroom. Just because he can. That bastard is living in a part of my head since the day I had to be forced to acknowledge our betrothal, and it doesn't just stop. The flowers pile up in the trash can. The scent is weak, but the more they pile and the closer I get the more I smell it. He sends them everywhere, and he doesn't let go.

I huddle together staring at the crushed petals, hugging myself, fingers absently scratching my skin until the irritated skin peels in bloody patterns.

At least the pain and blood keeps me in my body. I don't lose myself.

There ought to be a way to be free of the obligations. They will push it one day. The more I bleed, the more I am scared of it. Of the idea that I have to have a child. Of the period. Of my husband as well, in that manner. No more whisper children. Not mine. Not in my womb or in my lifetime.

Murder is the most obvious option.

A way to not be sensitive in cramps and a chance to elimiate any chance to have unwanted pressure on kids anymore. Sterilize myself like dogs. Stop unwanted procreation.

Hadrien is my only option to entrust that question. He stares at the bandage on my arm, then back to his books and scribbled notes.

"I'm not a physician," he clarifies. "I find that interesting. But I am not a doctor."

"You must know someone."

"Not in the capital, not personally. My father used to push me through the countryside to doctors and silver healers, but not here." He looks thoughtful, but he always has the same absent clever glare, so I am unsure if he registers it as urgent. "I'll ask Loren. We find someone. It may be an illegal procedure you just proposed. But it sounds interesting."

"Careful."

"Sure," he shrugs it off. "No names. Money solves that problem."

Money solves at least that problem. Others aren't as easy bought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Thanks for killing someone from my shitlist, I love you."
> 
> *Ptolemus staring smugly office style into a camera*
> 
> (I'm not really serious but hey if you read this thanks again for dropping by, my schedule is as shot down as my real life, sorry, but I don't give a shit about Valentines day and finished editing this after 2 weeks finally, I will return reading and all in march probably...)


	6. Execration

_execration_

_\- a prayer that harm will come to someone_

* * *

**_T_** he end of the month calls in another date, and another end altogether. The world outside the window stays cold, with fog or icy rain and frozen sheens peeling off stone and asphalt.

Evangeline and Ptolemus keep a careful path around me if they can avoid me, but act as much the same as always if not. That is fair. At least in their faces, they hide whatever disdain they keep now, they even share some of my general malice and pressure. But no one can know I spilled the truth in small pieces as valuable as diamonds. If they tell Larentia, she isn't showing up to ruin me.

The start of the newer year has passed now. I don't count in months and weekdays anymore, I don't count in birthdays. I count in death anniversaries and misery.

Gravestones.

First comes Roman, and the thought of the anniversary makes me foul and moody. Next on the list will be the day that they imprisoned me.

Eleven months of isolation.

Then the return into a beaten space.

Then being betrothed and finally married to Samson for one year.

Then, somewhere in the future, the day that I helped preparing Ellyn's death.

It is strange to think that days and hours change everything at the whim of fate and in the blink of an eye. So many gravestones and corpses.

So much blood.

Silver one in drips and red one in streams shot and bitten, I taste the iron in memory when I lick my lips.

The rivers flow behind my eyelids at night. The violence steers me and my muscles as the need to keep up the pace and power contains me. I scratch my arms, scrub my skin off in showers, irritated long marks of sharp, clean nails. I'm angry as ever. Especially thinking about drifting off again or losing my cool.

So many lost.

Many just disappearing, rotting together or keeping away.

So many missing.

Nobles from Corros have scattered and been found only partially, and none of them seems to know the now whereabouts of the leftover forces of the rebel cells. Sniffing out rebels should be the higher task. But everyone has been leering around Barrow's quarters and involvement too. Not that they act on it, the cowards, they know better. Atara runs shifts with me now, and she is much more socially accepted. She picks up things extremely fast, uniform and shaved head just the same as before in silent disdain.

We have a little chuckle about it watching her traverse the courtyard below the window, especially seeing her walking in a straight, displeased line behind Sonya Iral, stopping behind, turning flustered behind the displeased acceptance of commands.

"At least she's listening to what you tell her," Evangeline says and her eyes dart back one before settling on a stance on one cocked heel.

"They have the same interest in rumors," I tell Evangeline across the windowsill, and a group of my insects scatters off my sleeve into a crack. The black and grey vision changes with tremors of the bodies around me when I stretch out. My fingers accept the sensory flood of information. The waves of heat and movement, the clouds of scents that fall all over the room. "And we are alone."

Beside me, a cloud of my insects stirs. I tilt my head. The sensation is unwelcome. Evangeline keeps a very close eye but doesn't say anything in a bleak moment of showing her white teeth off. The bugs scatter further into the room. The air circulation around the cluster changes as they scout into one side of the room.

"Except for your shadow."

"Sonya never liked her," Elane says, dropping her glamour of woven shadows. She stands two feet away from me, and it's only thanks to the wreath I carry around on my person and wear in between that I haven't detected her.

Maven may have made me this gift because I told him about my approval. He also made it to blind me, and he made it so that Samson and I have even more breaking points as we keep each other at bay. He talked about obsession. And I asked him what he knew. He knows _a lot_ about it. Every gift and deal from him is as poisonous as it is alluring, just as my favorite animals. 

"How long have you been here?" I ask her. My head tries to piece together if she has been doing this all together the last months, always around when I wasn't focused on detecting her.

"A while," Elane acknowledges.

"Curious," I answer. I let that sink in my arsenal. It isn't like I was not sure that everyone has eyes and ears around. "Don't get caught in a doorway or room. We wouldn't want someone to find you where your head doesn't belong."

"The same can be said about you," Elane bites back low, voice not even raised. A strand of red hair has escaped her hairdo and dangles over one side of her face.

"It can be said about anyone, step off, Daliah," Evangeline shuts off whatever this is turning into. Her face is a carved moment of beautiful stone. I can see the glimmer of her mother in her features.

"Very well. It isn't my concern where the shadow girl goes. Keep it between yourselves. Most people are careful cowards and opportunists," I report thin-lipped. "Except for my sister and the rest of the Arven's there have been no visitors in Barrow's wing. If you want to build on it, I can start acting out on that."

"Your sister?" Elane asks.

"My half sister," I clarify. "She's reasonably smart and a little upstanding, but she may prove to be docile if we keep filing on her. If you have a better idea or plant, I implore you."

Even if she is visible, I can't read her brain, and the shroud of indicipherable thoughts continues. Just one look out of her bright eyes over to Evangeline, and there's some silent exchange I am not part of or will never be.

I clear my throat. "The other new blood keeps irritating the nobles hanging around Maven. We'll see how this progresses. But it does so slowly. I'm sure your father has his own ideas on how this should work out."

She doesn't answer that. Her face isn't even twitching.

One more moment to show she hasn't completely trusted me. Especially not since the confession.

The next official date is the end of the extended official mourning period and the more lax festivities return to the capital and the palace though.

The invitation means that I can snuff around the palace in the night under drunk or dangerous, which can prove as an advantage as well as a hard task, depending on how careful everyone is.

Then I realize in a cold sweat I'll have to be with Samson on some of those nights.

I spend the day brewing in my home and training not to panic picking up the wreath.

I can never let him know what I do.

I have to keep him out at all costs. 

* * *

In the night, every color is as grey and black as the sight of a centipede, lulled in shadows. Except for the spots of bright light that penetrate the never-sleeping capital, They sparkle over the stone and through the gardens, over the streets, and they lure in everyone that can hear the beckoning call. They are the promise of more days to come, they are the exalted taste of alcohol on your lips or music in your ear.

In my spot beside Samson, I don't feel happy or even attracted. I feel weak. The stone sucks it out of my system as I wear it in the same dark grey patterns as the chairs Maven sits on and the same as our cells are made of. 

In the monochromatic colors of the nightmare world, the rest of the court is dressed so bright in all their colors and extravagance it feels as if an artist has spilled his paints.   
They exsanguinate their selves in intoxicated states of mispronounced unawareness tonight. It's the same as every other night before. Every party is the same. They get drunk, they boast, they dance, they whisper, and sometimes if you are lucky, there is some blood and open dramatic confrontation. 

They ignore the war efforts and they ignore that there is some sort of invasive species in the country, they ignore the trouble and pain and murder.

I cough on a smoke plume that comes from someone to my right. In another ridiculous robe, Samson's hand presses harshly on the sleeve of my jacket. The thin fingers leave a deep pressure. They know no mercy now that he knows he has control over me in a public space. He even wears one of the black flowers on his pocket, and I know he had a lot of fun deciding that he can wear a dahlia on his clothes if he has another on his arm.

Instead of being dressed complimentary, we bite in swirls of bright green and dark blue. It warps to a swirl of venomous turquoise as we blur together walking. The colors are not clashing, but they might as well. I'm dressed in a business suit decorated in the honorary stripes of black, I don't even wear high heels, and the wreath drags over my temple. Samson is much taller than me this way, but my boots are dressed in metal, and if he tries, I carry a baton and knives under my jacket beside the skin, below the fabric of the thin shirt.

Neither of us drinks any of the heavy acquired sortiment of different alcohol carried by when we enter the gathering in the throne room. The uniformed red servants remind me of the infiltrated service at the parting ball. A cold shiver creeps over me remembering slipping on blood as heat exploded over head. Security is a little tighter by now. I still can't say anyone in this room is not a jumped up, dangerous creature. The silver more than the red even now.

"I thought you'd like to drink yourself miserable in public by now," I mutter, feigning my pulse doesn't flutter remembering his attempt to absorb me after Elara had died.

"I'm already miserable being here with you," he answers, just as low, head slow above my hairline. His lips are way too close to touching the metal on my temple as it archs up in the line of an archaic snake toward his movements. I pull back as best as I can in his grip without looking too desperate. "I don't need alcohol for it. Maybe you should drink to not be so scared."

The edge of my vision warps a little under the pressure of my cracking neck, grinding teeth and the needles penetrating my scalp. Still. In the edges of that hard vision, I'm far from alone.

To my left I can see Hadrien and his father engaged with a red haired woman. Mariella is less disgusted by the prospect of hanging next to poor Hadrien's arm, and he looks as if his head may explode in the charge of this social cacophony.

In the back, as small and harmless as he can, my father walks by, and the gleam of his Viper pin becomes a beacon for a moment before he disappears behind Volo and the entourage. The maddening loud smashing music reminds me of partiers celebrated in our mansion, and the memory makes me angry enough to stand taller and narrow my eyes upwards.

"I'm not alone," I whisper. "That's your problem. I'm not alone and I'm not available for you to wear me out."

"Just wait. I have a few plans for you and the rest, you sealed the fate a while ago," he promises me. His hand is tightening, and I put my other hand on top of it to drive my nails into his skin. "We have time. I'm patient."

"Do we?" I ask. "Are you, husband?"

For a second I hope that Tolly or Eve watch me from above the stairs on the rotunda , or somewhere behind the pillars, to know I never would lie about my relationship with this man.

He makes a disapproving noise. His blue shark eyes blink over the throne beneath the crystallized light. Maven is as far away as he can be from the rest of the whispers on his silent throne. I'm not sure he even sees any of us in whatever thought he is.

Samson leers as much or even more for a space on or beside that chair. He hungers always, he wants it all. I could understand that, if he wasn't also a vile monster that is contractually bound to my house and thinks he owns me.

His eyebrows push together like blond worms. 

"I want a dance with my wife," he decides, because the prolonged staring and the parting of fronts and people before him is frustrating. 

"One," I agree.

We don't waltz this time. This is much less formal and much more tangled. I regret it as soon as our bodies press together, and even more so when I can feel the way his fingers creep over my waist. The friction of the fabric makes me queasy.

In the bright light, just as many times before, Samson is a ghost made out of ash and terror, a pale imitation of attractive features that twist and turn into a bare skull filled with vicious mean thoughts.

My pulse is racing so high by now it must leap visible. I sneer at him as we step, one two three, and the smashing sounds of the music on the speaker is so hard it may be a marching song in drums and metal wind players.

Someone laughs to my right. The sound is feels wrong. Like the whole predisposed situation. And just as his hands keep pushing me, and I follow the steps, I decide to stomp down on one of his shiny polished shoe in the whirling middle. 

I stomp as hard as I can without looking like I have kicked him on purpose. He still grimaces slightly when his toes get crushed by my boot. He doesn't make the mistake of letting go though. He only pulls on me tighter.

His fingers grip through my jacket and I know he feels the missing backpiece of my shirt, and the parts of metal beneath the small billowing and the pockets of the suit.

"I want to stab you," I tell him just before he whirls me around. The world becomes a carusel of colors for a moment. 

"You're too scared to touch me," he answers.

Anger is red in color as it boils before my eyes but we huff it out and pretend as if we don't insult each other. They water in another drifting plume of smoke.

The music flows away, meeting and continueing in the next crashing sound.

I rip my hand free. In the whirl of drunkyards and fools of all kinds, we don't stand out.

The grudge runs in our bones watching each other. The gleaming beacon of the snake pin returns to my right and my father steps up across the foggy cloud through the billowing, blinking lights.

"Let me borrow my daughter," my father offers. The only reaction is a low disgusted sniffle, before retreating. The shark is now just going to draw circles. 

"Do you want a dance too?"

He laughs at that, scanty thin grey corners of his hair shaking. "I can't even walk right. Imagine how that would look."

I tilt my head under the weight of the wreath instead. 

He keeps smiling as his green eyes trail the vicinity. "Do you have your baton?"

"Yes?" I ask.

"Do you want to use it on someone tonight?"


	7. Erracy

_errancy_

_\- miscue_

_\- the state or an instance of erring_

* * *

**_T_** he hallway outside the throne room and the party leads away to a corner, then it breaks off and forwards to one of the courtyards. The whole surrounding is littered with people. A few are guests in silence for themselves, kissing or conspiring. Two of the guards are mine.

"He's drunk and alone," I tell my Viper cousin. Asher is a silent stone behind me, Bryce sneers. "If not, you take the guards. It doesn't even need to be that rough. Just a little blood."

"Lurking for drunk old men," Loren mutters. He looks lean and pretty in his suit, tailored for him, even if he hunches over and ruins the image with it. He wears it better than the plain grey clothes from the last weeks. A glimmer of his old self in the pulled-back strands of black hair and dangling tie. "Is that how you imagined leading the house?"

"You have no idea what I imagine," I tell him and brush it off. He opens his mouth again. "Shh now. This is just a tit for tat. And he deserves it."

The fountain sprinkles in happy trickles behind us as we wait. In one corner, one of my spiders has left a nightshaded web.   
"Iral and Lady Atara are around," Asher tells me as we do so.

"You'd know that," I mutter. "Let's hope they stay out of the way."

Catching a nymph off guard isn't hard. They don't have hypersensitive senses or tools to feel vibrations in the air, they don't see the future. Just keep an eye on the water.

It takes a few minutes. My father is fast on his ideas and information. Especially if they are sanctioned. I assume there is someone else behind it too. If only because he usually tries to hold me back from being violent in public.

One figure in pitch black shadows and voloputios shining lights.

I adjust my eyes. The frame is alone. It isn't Osanos. It's dressed in grey. The New Blood takes a night stroll.

We all wait beside the cover of the wall.

Loren draws a small breath.

Just the same as the council meetings, he looks as though he isn't bothered. But his uncanny eyes and the fact he knows what is happening makes me nervous.

I could change a plan and take him out. Or just have a nice talk.

His steps stops.

He looks over. To my hiding spot. Something in his face is twisted. As if he is livid and bothered about it.

I snort.

_Some other day. I really want to know what you think about._

As he continues, I clench my hand around the weapon beneath my jacket.  
Catching a nymph off guard isn't hard. They don't have hypersensitive senses or tools to feel vibrations in the air, they don't see the future. Just keep an eye on the water.

Osanos comes with one other guard, a personal one, maybe, or a spy. I let the others handle him, because I have a message to deliver.

My baton unfurls in one motion. I hurl myself forward. He sees me coming, but it hits him in the shin. He sinks like a stone in water.

"You," he spits that out. His drunken face clears up in splotches of grey anger and fear.My eyes swarm around, but with the wreath on, all I have is one pair. It doesn't see anyone.

"Did you have a nice evening, my lord?" I hit his arm again before he can move. I am angry and fast. It is one of my better qualities I have trained again in all the running and hunting.

"You have been very much not forthcoming," I inform him. "You could at least pretend to be nice and show respect."

"For you and your father?" He hisses. "I'd rather die."

"I'm sure I can arrange that soon," I hiss at him and lift the baton. "You have been warned to find a step back in line. We are all in the same palace forced together if you haven't noticed. You have been warned to step up against the Vipers or anyone, your manners need to improve in this trying times."

He creeps one step back.

The ground rustles and breaks in patterns. The stone above the floor gets drenched, and then in the break of the fountain, it aches, a metal pipe rakes up. The water rises in a flood as it pushes over me in a bubble down. It presses into my face and clogs my throat, seeps into my nostrils ready to suffocate me.

The baton falls out of my hand. Loren to my right moves.

In the blink that the water wavers, my system is almost breaking down. Instead of falling down and fainting, I pull my mouth close and hold whatever air is remaining. The world flickers in grey spots when I drag myself a step and collapse on the fine silk of Osanos shirt.

Then I bring my fist down on his face.

With the clashing force, his concentration breaks. My knuckles break in bloody bruises over his cheek.

The water falls down and drenches me.

My hands shake.

The cracks in my mind are panicking. The other part flees inside the violence. It's all I am good at.

Loren and Asher drag me back up before I can hit him again.

"You've been warned," Loren heaves. He pushes me back. I let him. He whispers to me while we walk. "Was that worth it?"

I don't have an answer.

The short burst of adrenaline and the lack of air fight inside my skin.

The air touches my spine softly below the drops of water. I try to shake it off my hair, a wild flood of strands. The rest of the needles is useless, and so I just pull them out until it flows down.

The water still dries on my hair and jacket when I step on the raised surrounding platforms back in the throne room. For a moment, since I am clearly not on guard duty and just sneak around, eyes turn to me, and weapons of all kind get pointed to kill me.   
I stand straight and wait for a moment, starting to press into the wet material of my sleeves.

It takes my cousin one moment and I get waved through. He's been standing watch over the room the entire night, and he only takes in my wet ensemble a moment before letting me drip and drop beside him on the higher grounds. Silver and green.

I take off my jacket and the weapons from the crimson dressed figures push up a little again. But all I expose is a wet back in a shirt slit down to show off my former broken spine.

The jacket rests on my arm. And I feel the weight of the knives inside it. It's as heavy as my head.

When everyone has settled again around me, I take a moment to look below. Samson is a small blue dot in the middle. He stares up at me and Ptolemus and narrows his eyes slightly before he pulls back. For a moment we both just stand silently in the uprising haze of this night, the smoke and the scent of spilled drinks and even more spilled laughter and words.

"Eventless night?" I inquire.

"So far." He doesn't look at me. It could be because he takes his position seriously. I also know by the strain in his throat that he's not over me hiding things from him. It stings again. I edge a little closer and shake my hair again. The rest of the wretched water is soaked in my shirt too deep. "Anything to report?"

"This? No." I feel the shiver on my back again. The scars tingle on my naked skin. It feels too exposed and I want my layers of shirts back. This was a stupid idea. "I had a small discussion with someone. Another loose screw. Don't worry."

"I didn't worry," he huffs. He still doesn't look at me.

"I know, just...if you had. Now you know." I lower my head. The hair fans out in dark, slightly curling strands. "I won't say about it in this setting. If you need my assistance, I am downstairs."

"I have it covered, thank you very much, Lady Daliah. Go away. You are off duty."

He still doesn't look at me and the gratitude in his word is a hiss of iron.

"Fine." Even if he doesn't want it. I nudge his arm with mine when I fold my hand and take a straight stance with my boots pushing together. "Until later, cousin."

My back is bare and exposed between stares and the brushing of clothes. People don't part for me in their drunk circles and capsuled groups, and I have to box my way through them courtly in bows and weaving motions.

I want to push until I find my father, but the clasp of Samson's arm is faster.

"Who's the henchman now," he whispers. He stares at the new bruises and my hair tousled beneath the wreath. "And who has been happily extracting thoughts in your absence?"

"They'd notice," I try to expose a lie.

"They are drunk, why would they?" He answers instead, his fingers are eager on my bareback in the open cut of my shirt. He isn't yet wandering too deep to be making an obvious move. But even so, who'd say anything. I am his wife. "Only a little bit. But enough. It wasn't a bad night. Do you want to make it even better?"

"I will break your foot this time if you try to dance with me again."  
I want to tell him that I will shove my baton where the sun doesn't shine if he does not let go of my back.

"Won't you look at that," he says instead and cuts his assault short. His eyes blink to find something much more interesting than pestering me.

I follow his look with a short delay and that moment is enough to see Lark in her stark work attire up to her gloves. She looks comically pale and out of place in the parade. Lead by Evangeline in a sparkling gown, with metal forming much more of than just the hint of a crown above her knotted careful hairdo and spikes all over her. Following are the whole bunch of Arven's, and Lark is just squeezing along holding a leash just like the day of the transmission in front of the palace. They have dragged the Barrow girl out of her guarded wing and quarters.

Whatever drunken stupor and amusement held the room.

It withdraws.

I get stiff and stand still, as if that makes it any better, or changes anything. The jacket is still pressed below my arm and I feel it slip. I don't have the control to keep it up. It'll fall to the ground.

Flowing like silver bands behind me, the old men and starving wolves of the council rotted together. Provos and my father are curiously awake checking their canes and golden cufflinks. Volo is less trying to be incospicous and just trying to gauge the situation now that his daughter is back in the led of the entourage.

Evangeline has her stage set, and she has put Maven in a bad place for not coming prepared. He was just observing the whole wild rush of the party from his uncomfortably uncushioned throne, now he has to listen to her demands as they unfold. It is so silent and the tension ebbs up so much Evangeline's voice carries through every single one of her words and demands as she pushes him. It is a little like me and Samson dancing. It isn't exactly clear who leads, the participants want to kill each other, and they grit their teeth in smiles and polite etiquette.

"You ordered the terrorist to be imprisoned, shut away like a useless bottle of wine, and after a month of council deliberation, there has been no agreement on what is to be done with her. Her crimes are many, worthy of a dozen deaths, a thousand lifetimes in our worst jails. She killed or maimed hundreds of your subjects since she was discovered, your own parents included, and still she rests in a comfortable bedchamber, eating, breathing—alive without the punishment she deserves."

She's not wrong. She's pushing it. But she's not lying. I have been complaining about the wavering moments in the sessions, and so has her brother for all I know.

"The punishment she deserves," he cocks his head. "So you brought her here. Really, are my parties that bad?"

Everyone is either chuckling or uncomfortably shifting. The audience is suddenly involved again, and we are as badly prepared as Maven is himself. Behind me, small mutters and words get exchanged. Short. Wondering.

I wonder if Sonya and Atara see this now, if they made it back, wherever they were. I wonder where the New Blood has disappeared to.

Samson adds pressure on my bones, and I am sure he will break my wrist as he presses down, gleefully and angry at the same time, waiting, just like all of us.

"I know you are grieving for your mother, Your Majesty," she says and Samson is about to explode, body as stiff as mine, force building in his brow. My fingers push flat against his chest , even if I want to punch him.

She is going on a deep dive there, then reciting his father's words. He can't back out. She has him in her teeth like Runt locks her teeth around a target.

The stage play continues, and she pulls and pushes at him. My eyes waver back over Lark's frightened posture, the other silencers just as tense, and the girl in between, harried and dragged here, just another display, and even if she's as small as me already, she looks very much tiny like my bugs in her hunched form on the ground.

"The council is days away from a decision, my lady." He tries so hard to look smooth. But just like my smiles are sneers, his answer is coming out in grinding motions. A bad lie, one easily exposed. He could do better, he is so excellent on the words, and the part of reading people. But she has him quite literally against the back of a stone, a wall, his throne, with everyone watching, and nothing is giving him any leeway. 

If he shows any weakness, they will jump him right here and now. They will openly dispose of him, and the fight is already on the rise inside and between us. The blood on my knuckle proves it.

My eyes filter up and around. Trying to gauge again who has been in it. Tolly hasn't been. He looks just as frantic around as I do from above the stand. Good. At least one of my preferrred siblings is on the same page. Even if he probably doesn't worry for Maven. Or cares about Samson.

My husband is a loaded gun, and a finger lingers over his trigger blissfully. He only waits. My hand pushes against his chest once, but it may as well scrape over steel.   
Without any effect, he glides one or two steps forward, and my fingers only claw the flower off his pocket as they try to hold him back. I put my weight behind it, trying to appear not as angry as I am, inconspicuously in a hug that is more of a tight choke around his waist and back as I put my feet down and hold the ground so he can't step up and make his voice known.

For a second, as our bodies and arms collide and our feet crush the black flower on the ground, we look like a couple in a worried embrace. None of us bates our breath because of worry for each other.

I can see that he's greedy and eager, in an angry way. In the worst angry way. The one that's close to fulfillment. His lips breathe in some foul air open, white teeth too exposed in the twist of a smile, and I want to put my fist in them to loosen one up.

His fingers touch the back of my spine above my scars from the fall. The mosaic shrivels beneath his cold fingertips before he lets go.

_Anything but giving him what he wants. Anything, creative torture, a different kind of imprisonment._

My tongue presses against my teeth. If I speak up, I'm coming from the crowd alone, and I am not Evangeline. I don't have the same protection, and I am not betrothed to Maven. I don't have any argument. I can't speak up to save this girl. She has murdered too many of our own, she has been too public, she was a front figure. I don't want to save her. I only want to deny Samson in this process.

Evie already started this. She clearly thought about this. I let her speak even if I want to yell from my space in between the other bodies. Everyone is so silent now, their rustling colorful clothes and metal peaces attached to armor clink as loud as screams.

"Forgive my boldness, Your Majesty. I know you wish to honor your council as best you can, even the weakest parts of it. Even the cowards who cannot do what must be done. But you are the king. The decision is yours."

Maven has some options. It is too late now for him to push it away as he did in the council meetings because Evangeline has cornered him. I can hear that his voice from the throne. He can't offer anything but what is demanded to all the eyes that watch him and all the faces that twist again. They are not so different from Samson's hunger.

"Queenstrial certainly did bring forth the most talented daughter."

The blue eyes in the smooth pale face creep over the crowd, averting away from having to hold her hand. In that small window of digust, he looks very much alike to Samson fuming in expectacion in my arm slung around his waist still. He looks as excited as I did just an hour ago, or before at the prospect of a hunt. A predator. My whisper husband smells the scent of blood.

I shake my head. Slowly.

 _Don't give him any power,_ I think. _Don't supply him. You denied him before, do it again. Offer something else. Anyone. Not him._

But Maven's eyes only glide over me, and I don't know if he ever sees it. He looks at Samson instead , and something inside my chest presses together. And at that, Samson only pushes out of my grip, as if I am a breeze and he is a jet soaring downward for a barrage of missiles.

"Cousin!" He demands. "Your petition of interrogation is granted."

Pity is a shallow pool in my stomach as I watch Lark drag the girl up.

It's growing slightly watching Samson approach. Because I know all about how he rips minds away. My throat is dry.

My eyes try to shoot daggers up to Maven, to Evangeline. None of them look at me.

Mare Barrow screams being dragged back and off.

I stand in the crowd, alone. Clenching my hands to fist.

The butcher has work tonight. And who knows what comes afterward. He strives in the attention of people watching him. As if he is back in an arena again.

This is a loss for me, even if Evangeline just won the confrontation and forced an action. She threw me under the wheels. Or didn't think about me at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"Friendship ended with ~~Maven Ptolemus Evangeline~~ everyone. Jon is my new best friend now."_


	8. Prevention

_prevention_

_-the act of prevention or hinderin_ _g_ **_  
_**

* * *

**_S_** leeping with an angry stomach is a too well-known feeling. It is the usual meal of resentment and hurt. It burns brighter than alcohol and it fills better than a well-done slab of meat or bowl of oatmeal.

I throw things in my old room and curl my too-small body together in the middle of the bed. The three dogs watch me with impartial concern from the space around me. They sniff on the jewelry and clothes, noses pushing over. Then the floorboards around the bed ache, the mattress bends under their massive forms. One Ear sits beside my bedside like a silent guardian and licks my bruised hand, his brother butts his soft, shaggy head against my back on the bed. Runt barks once and wiggles in the free spot next to me, snapping at her brothers to make room.

At least my dogs never betray me.

"I should have known," I tell Runt and scratch her head stuck in between my limbs. The dogs are massive bullies, even slim Runt, true wolflike friends in yellow and brownish hues of eyes. They are no lapdogs, but right now, they might as well be puppies, mellow and harmless, friendly and comforting. "We are all doing what we think will serve ourselves best. That was stupid of me."

Runt watches me carefully. I squeeze her form wrapped up in my arm like she is my child, and she lets me misuse her for that cuddle just as she misuses me as a pillow. The warmth coils around me as her biggest brother falls and takes most of the space behind me, snorting softly.

"It's always me on my own," I tell her and she lifts her head and licks her chap as I pet her extensively and continue down her front. Her tail starts to swish up and down heavy. "And you, of course, because you're good dogs. You are loyal. You are good. One Ear. Up. I'll have to come up with some retribution."

With a happy leap, he complies. All their furry big bodies form a blanket over me.

"Poison maybe?" I shudder. Time to murder someone with the weaponry from the Viper Pit. I could exterminate all of Whitefire.

What would that mean? Anarchy? The wide populace of silver people never harmed me or did me wrong, they are a mob to me in my memory from arenas, speeches, public spaces. Who'd they trust?

I wouldn't poison my cousins or their family. We have a crown prince on the loose...and if Volo is anything, he is thorough. He would take over even more. Some ideas of hierachy would still exist.

I feel stinging anger in my skin that's irritating. But the idea of seeing some choke is brilliantly bright.

My list has a few names...

On top is Samson. At least there he has the prime position.

Would I poison Maven? 

The dogs pull up beside me and I close my eyes, dreaming of scales and fangs.

They don't stop the nightmares. But the familiarity helps to fall asleep and even catch a tiny sliver of rest.

The moonlight still is a crest over the floodlights of the capital when I wake up again. I see some stars behind the light pollution, and it is cold.

The mansion is half asleep. The pack is too. Runt lifts her head when I scramble to my feet, scratching my arm so heavy that I feel the flaking of skin and the searing prize of pain earthing me. She pads behind me, a silver shadow, and her brothers would too if I didn't lull them back to sleep.

I wander through the house barefoot, gown swinging, dog paws behind me.

It reminds me of another house and other times. I used to wander through the house I shared with Roman at night, and snakes and other creatures would follow me around.

I would sneak through these very floors as a child and watch everyone laugh, party, weep or work themselves over the bone.

I am neither in my old home nor my childhood.

The Viper Pit lies silent behind the closed and locked door. The rows of liquid death skirm.

I wonder...how much does it take? The numbers are not that hard to calculate if I decide to push on group by group of hated people. The scorpions scatter in behind their glass windows and I smile at them.

The floors stretch into the rambling of rooms. I check my family's spaces slowly.

My father sleeps in his room. At least that's good. Runt agrees with a swing of her head. The other rooms are just as quiet, but I don't interrupt their slumber.

Hadrien's reading spot is abandoned. Runt sniffs on a tangled tie flung over a lamp next to a stack of books. She follows the track and finds his jacket next to it, then she trails off.

I scoop it up.

It's a soft, black one. There's a long red hair on it.

Runt sniffs back and growls low. Her body points back to the quarters.

I stare at it a moment, think about the way Hadrien flushes next to Mariella and that she held his arm, then back to Elane vanishing and appearing in light manipulation because of her blood.

"They're quiet if they are upstairs together, let's leave it at that," I tell her, shuddering. Mariella can phase in and out of sight if she is upstairs. Nothing to do about all my family entranced and endeared by redheads, from Atara to Evangeline to Hadrien.

In the salon, next to the moonlit window, Loren has fallen asleep by the tank of bright fish, and I let him rest. Whatever is our relationship...My cousin and I aren't enemies anymore. I transgress into a push of pity watching him stir. He is not the same creature as before. The last months have shaped him just the same as they have crystallized me.

He stirs the same as my dogs. Just the same I lull him back with a shush.

The morning inspection continues down to the yard. The kennels are filled with snoring bodies. The ground is so cold under my naked soles, but the feeling is soothing and fulfilling now that the anger and cursing fear is back in my system.

I plant my toes into the stones, dig into the carved curbs and grooves filled with dirt and tiny sprouting flowers.

Most of the dogs sleep. One black one lifts her head. Her body is swollen heavy. There's a litter coming. Runt snorts and huffs along with the stones beside me. My shards of thoughts drift to Samson and then they drift to Calpurnia's face, telling me about my litter of whisper children.

The idea of me doing anything motherly is laughable. I would treat them with the template of Larentia and my father imprinting duty on me at best and at worst, I would just lock them in a kennel similar to these dogs out here. Because they would be monsters. They would not be like me- they would be like him in most cases.

Everyone always expected me to have children. With Roman too. They locked me away and I never did my deed, even when we had intimate relations.

The thought is still as welcome as everything about those two people in my mind.

Runt senses me tensing. She drifts back over the stone.

"Who needs kids," I tell her. "They're cute little beasts if they are animals, but they are only unruly monsters if they are human. And they turn into people. Can you imagine us dealing with that?"

She barks low. I chuckle. Then laugh.

I just stand in the quicksilver and polluted white light and laugh about how absurd everything is.

How strange. How painful familiar. How unfair.

Runt barks again, angry this time, and her body is taut.

And then, when I look over, the way from the back and the gates, over the courtyard, there's a familiar grey dressed figure.

He just saunters through my backyard in the islands of security, as if he is in a park or an alley taking a stroll. His eyes push upward right at me. Their color simmers like curdled blood in the light. My toes dig in deeper inside the ground and I stop laughing.

"It's a long stroll from the palace and Maven protecting you," I snap.

Runt at my feet is just waiting for the right moment to put her teeth into him. All he does is put his hands in the pocket of his coat. He looks at the house and blinks. Almost as if he counts seconds or moments.

"You broke into my home," I inform him, startled. I straighten myself to act as if I am not. "Are you lost or reckless?"

He doesn't react to my insult. He came here after this long and strange night of movement. It's not a coincidence. The cold seeps through my gown and bones now.

"You know it's neither of those."

"Let's skip the small talk then," I tell him. "Shall we? I wanted to get my hands on you anyway."

Something in that phrase makes something in his brow twitch. The rest of his face is blank and severed. Not livid as he looked walking past the fountain days earlier.

"You're a beacon of bad decisions," he tells me. "At least that's consistent with your bows to serve. So listen. I'm not doing this for you, but it helps you."

Maven told me I know my place, Larentia molded me to serve family, and Samson said I was an unwelcome resisting force to break through.

This is new. But he isn't wrong. I have been beaten and almost murdered too many times in the last months, and it always ended in failure. I listen with my head crooked, hair wild around my face.

"Stop deciding to poison everyone." He narrows his eyes slightly. Like I gave him a headache.

"That's the bad decision?" I huff. Is there a future he can see that I actually impact by just murdering everyone? Is that it? "Wouldn't that make things easier?"

He watches me closely. Or maybe he sees through me, I can't say for sure.

"Go to Corvium as soon as you can."

"To Corvium?" Runt still growls at my feet, then she starts slowly creeping up. She circles him, trying to be as intimidating as possible. It has little to no effect on him. "Where the riots incited? Why, by all means, do you-"

His eyes are lost in the moon again. "It changed. Good. You listened. Don't get killed too soon."

I don't like the sound of that. "Too soon? What will happen to me? And why are you telling me that now..." I chew on the words to title him before his name escapes my mouth as a razor flung at his face. "Jon?"

We're strangers in my home. Before I can say anything, he scurries off again.

"Jon?" I repeat. My voice gets lost between the stones and the rattling fence as he sneaks off again. Echoes reverberate from my slow callouts and the steps. The metal squeaks.

Standing me up in my own home. Great.

I feel humiliated. I wish I had kicked him in the shin at least.

Atara finds me sitting next to the kennels minutes or hours later. The sky is turning brighter. Daylight rinses in.

"Your lips are turning black," she states. She's draped in her training gear, and now that she exposes her skin, I see how the muscles ripple underneath. The girl has gained even more muscles, even on her slim form it is visible she is as fit as possible, dancing on her stomach.

"I'm fine." Runt has sprawled over my body as we sit here. "How was your shift last night? Did you see how Evangeline got to Barrow?"

Atara's eyes twinkle like pebbles. "I thought you two were boasting together about it by now. You are always on her side."

I smile faintly at that, showing a row of teeth. Her report is short but precise. Evangeline just waked up, threatened the Arven guards and made them comply. She didn't argue with Lark or her kin. They complied. I told her my half- sister was smart and reasonable. She used that.

"Sonya was on my heels the entire time," Atara ends in a puff. "She's... I was always beneath her. But now...Now she's always on me."

I can imagine that. She was on me too for a while. Touching my hand gently, holding my spider, always puffed in the back , swiftly and silent as expected.

"Sonya has the tendency to be locked on her target. Look at you getting popular," I mock weakly. "Asher, Sonya, and never forget darling Heron."

Atara is flushing from ears and shaved hairline to neck. "You know it's not like that."

"What do I care what it's like."

I stand up. Her face wavers. I don't tell her about Jon. I don't say a word about it.

* * *

The palace reels and shudders the day after the party.

At the abrupt end and new development has thrown half of the people of the loop and the other half right where they want to be.

The next morning is a strange, angry attack of news. The tasks flutter in and orders get handed out in thin waves of information.

If I went to Corvium, as Jon said, I would at least be away from my cousins for a moment. I need a moment to figure it all out. And someone else that makes his presence known now , even as I just walk by.

In the flurry of stone, blood, and words, Samson stands out like a stalagmite of salt and ice now in the council room. He bustles on his space, and he looks so satisfied with himself that it makes me sick. It's the brimming small satisfaction of a cat clawing and toying with a mouse, or a dog lazily chewing on a bone. He has even the same low gleam of pride on himself as if he has accomplished enough for the world to recognize his grandness finally. He doesn't walk the victory off like his gutting stab in the arena.

He had a piece of vengeance for losing the blue whisper queen. _He is given retributional honor and granted things._

It makes my stomach twist and my heartbeat fluttering against my ribs.

Seeing him in this room makes me sick. Seeing that no one says anything to shush him away even more.

Seeing the black and grey swirling stone seat that Maven sits on and that he leans over at one side adds to the sickness. All the words want to sputter out of my mouth like black ichor and blood staining his perfect slicked back pale hair and skin, down to his shirt and the collar of the blue that opens like a blooming blackeye and shows his straining neck and bobbing throat as he talks and smiles.

In the backseat, just outside of reach, the New Blood Seer does his best to ignore the presence. Just as Samson ignores him, they dance around an invisible border here. They both barely look past each other, and if I didn't know better, I would call the expression on the grey figure slightly disgusted, while Samson is just a beacon of his usual hostile vanity and violence. Both of their faces twist a little more in the same notion and slight frowns when I sneer in their direction. The difference is easy. Samson directs his cackling satisfaction and wins forward like a hug to envelop me. The New Blood is still looking past Samson in his frown. He reminds me of Hadrien in unwillingness or inability to form an attachment. I don't blame him. He is unwelcome and he doesn't want to be.

And in the midst of them on his chair, wearing his crown and cape and the same cold nothingness as he did before, Maven just flatly exhumes a foul presence.

If I was a burner, I would set the room on fire. If I was a nymph, I would flood it. The contagious cold is a sickness, it feels so strong it soaks in all my pores and makes me sweat.

I turn my back to the council room.

Away from them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jon: stop planning mass murders  
> Daliah: Oh that's what I am in trouble for? ok.
> 
> and if that isn't their relationship in a nutshell idk


End file.
